How's Your Skin Today--Thin, Velcro Or Teflon?

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Our human skin marks the protective boundary between us and the outside world. In a figurative sense, we sometimes speak of folks being "thin-skinned," or of their allowing other people or experiences to "get under their skin."

Some of us may find ourselves especially sensitive to other's words or actions. In other words, our skin, metaphorically speaking, may be more like velcro than teflon.

Velcro is a product that was created by Swiss engineer George de Mestral back in 1941 after he observed how the burrs of certain plants stuck to his clothing and to the tangled fur of his dog's hair. 

The clothing and the fur, he noted, represented a set of loops to which the tiny hooks in the plant burrs readily attached and held on to. 

Whether folks collect a lot of these while walking by some burdock plants, for example, depends not so much on how many are in their path, but by the material in the clothing their wearing. Thus if one were wearing something like a raincoat instead of a wool coat, nothing would stick.

So what if the surface of our skin, figuratively speaking, were more like smooth teflon rather than the loop side of a velcro surface?

This reminds me of the illustration used in the Bible about our being equipped with the "whole armor of God" as a means of deflecting whatever malevolent darts we encounter. 

The helmet, shield and other parts of that "armor" are just figures of speech, of course, not actual coats of teflon, but can we, by faith, picture ourselves as being less vulnerable to what others aim our way?

I think so.